NEURODESIGN® · MATERIALS LIBRARY
The materials library
Materials databases already exist, and the good ones are very good. They organise products by what a material is made of, what it emits, and what it costs the planet. None of them organise materials by the relationship between a measured physical property and a human sensory, physiological or cognitive response.
That relationship is what this library holds. A surface has properties a laboratory can measure: reflectance, absorption, roughness, effusivity, emission rate. A person has responses. The distance between those two things is the subject here, rather than an inconvenience to be smoothed over on the way to a specification.
Hospitality first, and the guestroom before anything else. It is the longest uninterrupted material exposure any interior delivers, to an occupant who is asleep, has no control over what was specified, and cannot move away from it.
- attributes
- 87
- material classes
- 49
- outcomes
- 22
- response pathways
- 22
- classes with evidence
- 4/49
- corpus records linked
- 61/121
- without a test method
- 10
- products
- 0
Why the product count is zero
The product record is fully specified: 62 fields across seven groups, on the method page. It holds no records. Manufacturer-specific numbers are only meaningful when they are carried from a named test report, at a stated method and version, and filling those fields from marketing copy would produce a database that looks authoritative and is not. That is the failure this library exists to avoid, so it is not going to be the way it launches.
Six layers
Every record is held across six layers, each answering to a different authority. Keeping them apart is what stops a laboratory measurement and a health claim ending up in the same sentence.
- 1ProductA specific manufactured item: maker, collection, SKU, format, availability, price band, documentation.Authority: Manufacturerschema defined, no records
- 2Material classWhat the thing is physically made of, independent of who made it. Wool, cork, oak, limestone, fired clay, gypsum.Authority: Neurodesignlive
- 3Environmental performanceEmissions, durability, end-of-life. Mapped to existing certification schemes rather than re-derived.Authority: Third-party certifiertaxonomy live, records pending
- 4Sensory attributeWhat a person can actually perceive: reflectance, absorption, roughness, contact warmth, odour. Measured, with the test method attached.Authority: Test laboratorytaxonomy live
- 5Response pathwayThe route by which that sensory exposure is proposed to reach a person. Drawn from the mechanism library, never invented here.Authority: Research corpuslive, corpus-linked
- 6Standards crosswalkWhich rating systems a property may contribute to, and under what documentation.Authority: Rating bodytaxonomy live, mappings pending
The class layer
Evidence attaches to a material class, never to a brand, because no study has ever tested a named commercial product. The count on the right is classes carrying at least one corpus record, out of the total named in that family. It is mostly zero, and that is the honest state of the field rather than a gap in the reading.
Wood and plant structure
3 / 7The only material family in this library with a dedicated psychophysiological literature behind it, including two systematic reviews rated at the corpus's highest evidence strength and shortest translation distance.
Stone and earth
1 / 9High density, high thermal effusivity, acoustically reflective. The class most often carrying a wellness narrative and least often carrying any human-response evidence at all.
Acoustic and insulation cores
0 / 5Materials specified for a single measured property and almost never seen or touched. Included because they are where a room's acoustic behaviour is actually decided, behind whatever finish is credited for it.
Animal and plant fibre
0 / 6Fibres with high porosity and low thermal effusivity. The acoustic and tactile workhorses of a guestroom, and the class where composition disclosure is weakest because backings, adhesives and treatments are rarely named.
Ceramic and glass
0 / 5Fired and fused mineral surfaces. Chemically inert and effectively non-emitting once fired, which makes them the cleanest class on the emissions layer and among the harshest on the acoustic one.
Coatings and finishes
0 / 5A layer measured in micrometres that determines gloss, contact response and often the entire emissions profile of the assembly beneath it. Systematically under-specified relative to its influence.
Metal
0 / 4Specified in small areas and touched constantly. Thermal effusivity an order of magnitude above every other class here, which is why metal hardware is the most reliably cold thing in a room at equilibrium temperature.
Synthetic fibre and polymer
0 / 8The dominant contract materials by volume. Strong on durability and cleanability, and the class where semi-volatile emissions and additive chemistry sit largely outside current certification.